Since the early eighties learning through competitive performance has entered the political agenda. On regional, national, and international level benchmarking is defined by a certain style of politics that legitimizes political decision in terms of best practises. This development has been interpreted as the expression of increased policy learning and deliberation but also as a new siren call or fashion of public management. The analysis of US-welfare reforms shows that under conditions of experimental welfare state benchmarking can indeed speed-up and institutionalize the diffusion of innovations. In the US the recent paradigm shift of social policy (welfare-to-work) is driven in connexion to a paradigm shift of public governance (benchmarking). Benchmarking achieves this transfer potential by blinding out conditions and consequences. Its pretended neutrality makes it irresistible and indispensable for the legitimation of reform decisions. Local welfare administrations though tend more and more to refuse this indirect coercive transfer. Results of this analysis are of interest for policy transfer studies and comparative welfare state analysis.